November 18, 2024 • 43 mins
John Wasik has secret knowledge of where some Rusty Patch Bumblebees live. (Spoiler alert - he's not telling).
He's also authored a book on Abraham Lincoln's non-war-related contributions to our nation, He is an actively working journalist, County Board member, Forest Preserve commissioner, and a fascinating person.
This far-ranging conversation recalls construction vehicles rumbling on what is now our walking trails, to how he found out about the bees, to what it means to retire.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, neighbors.
(00:02):
Welcome to Around the Lake podcast.
I am once again on a walk with Fletcher and Watson.
It is November, late, late November.
It's Sunday.
I gotta look at my watch, but I think it's the 19th.
And it's not the 19th.
(00:24):
It's the 17th.
And it's beautiful.
It's just balmy, right?
This is October weather, not November weather.
There's a full moon, or there nearly a full moon, I think last night or Friday night was
a full moon.
The lake trail is just glowing and the white limestone is just glowing and the moon fog
(00:50):
is settled in over the prairie.
Fletcher and Watson are sniffing, it smells different at night, I guess, than during the
day at the edges of the trail.
This week our guest is John Wasik, author, journalist, elected official, and neighbor
(01:11):
since 1999 when Prairie Crossing was still brand new.
We talk in our conversation about one of his books that I read in preparation of this interview,
Lincolnomics and the impact Lincoln had on how we grow as a people economically with
(01:41):
internal improvements and colleges and land grant colleges and what we did to the native
peoples of this land.
Really a refreshing look at Lincoln as a many civil war buff.
I've enjoyed everything about Lincoln is about the war and John's book is not.
(02:05):
It's about what Lincoln did despite the war.
So there's plenty here if you're not a civil war person, but there is a conversation.
And about, you know, again, kind of focusing on conservation.
Really because of that development that we've seen, that we've seen since Lincoln, the 1830s,
(02:30):
our prairie is almost gone.
As we talked about with Jim O'Connor last time.
Speaking of last time, it's been a minute, it's been a month.
I planned to do these every other week, it just didn't work out.
But some of the interviews I lined up and some of the people I wanted to talk to.
(02:51):
But we kind of needed that time, didn't we?
Lots changed since that last podcast.
Whole world's changed and maybe not the better for conservation, but maybe sometimes in opposition,
in opposition, conservation efforts actually do better.
(03:13):
I don't have it in front of me since I'm walking, but during the George W. Bush administration,
there's a lot of progress, mate.
So let's hope, right, for all our sakes.
And as I look up at that moon, I think I'd like if you, anyone would like to join me
on the next full moon walk, we could maybe lap the lake together, enjoy the darkness
(03:39):
and the light that the full moon gives.
Just appreciating together and some of this beautiful surroundings.
If you'd like to do that, go ahead and email me at aroundthelakepc at gmail.com.
But anyway, here is John and I hope you enjoy this episode.
(04:00):
Got a hot mic?
Yeah.
All right, John Woczak, welcome to the Around the Lake podcast.
Well, thanks for having me.
Tell me about yourself.
We don't know each other too well, so tell me.
Well, I'm an author and a journalist.
I've written 19 books, working on my 20th and published all over the place.
(04:24):
I was a columnist for Bloomberg and Writers for a while and then I contributed to New
York Times, Wall Street Journal.
Now I'm writing for Next Avenue, which is a PBS site and, you know, occasional piece
for the Sun Times and, you know, mostly the kind of writing I'm doing now is focusing
on environmental topics and really how people can approach the subject on a hyper local
(04:50):
level.
My new book is being serialized through my newsletter's substack called Refinement.
And it's a serialized version of, well, if you were to do something in your neighborhood,
what would it look like?
It's a series of vignettes on people doing really important things on a daily basis.
(05:11):
And that's what really gets my juices flowing.
Can you give us an example?
What's one of those stories?
Yeah, well, so for example, I came across a couple of people who found a rusty patched
bumblebee.
Now, for those people who are not engaged in bee lore, the rusty patched bumblebee is
(05:32):
a federally endangered species.
I ran into three people who really didn't know each other at all who had seen them and
had documented them and sort of uploaded the images to an app called iNaturalist and were
confirmed.
So it was like, how often do you see a federally endangered species, right?
(05:53):
So I'm, you know, as a forest preserve commissioner, I was like, yeah, well, where'd you see it?
And they told me and I can't tell anybody.
I was like, oh, yeah, I tell you, you know, you have to get through security clearance
and that won't work.
So it was just kind of a thrill.
I mean, little things like that.
So I do a lot of volunteer restoration work, local forest preserves.
I've been doing it here at Prairie Crossing for 25 years that we've lived here, occasional
(06:16):
burn and, you know, pulling invasive species, things like that.
So all that is about building community in a very direct way because you're doing something
with somebody else that's very productive.
I mean, I have to tell you, even in the middle of summer when there's bugs out and it's really
hot and you're really sticky, you know, you yank up a bunch of sweet white clover and
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it's one of the best feelings.
I don't know why.
I mean, I do other things like I bike all the trails and I hike and we camp a little
bit and we do the things that a lot of people like to do.
But you know, the most satisfying thing is like, hey, you know, we worked with a bunch
of neighbors to clear that area over there and look at it now.
It's really coming back.
(07:02):
So lately it's more about creating habitat.
So my origin story is at least as an environmentalist and perhaps as a forest preserve commissioner
is that 30 years ago we lived in unincorporated Wakanda and we had two horses.
So we bought this really ramshackle ranch and it was just, it was just place should
(07:25):
have burned down.
We spent nine years remodeling it and tending to the horses.
My wife had a business.
I was working in the city as a magazine editor on a terrible commute and you know, it was
a beautiful piece of property with a 150 year old cottonwood on it and they had a barn that
we had to fix up and excuse me, the horses took up a lot of time.
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So it was one of those places where you had to love it to be there and then, you know,
after a while babies came along and said, well, we got to have a really decent neighborhood
in which to raise our two daughters.
And so we started looking around.
(08:10):
We came across Prairie Crossing at the time it was just half built.
But I read a couple articles about it and we started talking to people and it was one
of the nation's first conservation communities, meaning that, you know, the homes were designed
to be energy efficient for that time, which was 1999.
(08:34):
No solar panels or anything, but you know, they did the best they could at that, you
know, time in history.
And it had a lot of open space.
It had a working organic farm, things we have today, which have really evolved over the
years in a lot of interesting ways.
But those are the kinds of things that really attracted us.
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When our girls were young, they were hen house helpers and they collected eggs and were always
at the farm getting dirty and, you know, really getting engaged in what was going on, you
know, all around them.
And, you know, we have an orchard across from us and we live on Prairie Orchid.
And it's an actively cultivated, you know, place where you can get persimmons and apples
(09:20):
and blackberries and raspberries and even pawpaws now that are coming along slowly.
It's a very difficult route.
You know, I saw an article about how warming climate might mean that pawpaws get more of
a chance to make it to market.
I couldn't believe that after I just learned what a pawpaw was that here.
It's a very fickle fruit, unlike a banana, which you can keep on the shelf for about
(09:43):
a week.
Pawpaw, you got to sell it that day.
And it's just you got to eat it right away and it goes bad really quickly.
But it's an interesting little fruit and it's native too.
Yeah.
I mean, it'd be a while before we can grow bananas here.
Hopefully it won't be that hot.
But, you know, that's something we can grow here.
So your wife is Kathleen.
What are your daughter's names?
(10:04):
Sarah is the oldest and she's living in the city and working and working on her MBA.
And Julia is our youngest.
She's also living in the city and working and working on her graduate education and
both went to Grayslake Central High School.
Nice, nice.
When, give us a visual, like what, when you first turned into Prairie Crossing to go look
(10:26):
at building sites or your, you know, how's, I don't know if you built your house, what,
what did it look like?
What was not here?
What was here?
Well, it was very much a work in progress.
The trail behind our house was still a half open road, which, you know, construction trucks
were going down and we were told it was going to be closed.
And then I had sort of a tiff with one of the developers is like, you know, we don't
(10:50):
really want construction trucks, you know, driving on the trail behind our house.
So we got, that was, you know, Rizal.
But you know, most of the trails here were actually farm roads.
And later converted into our trail system.
And then as we connected to other trails, it became, you know, more of a sort of connection
(11:13):
to the rest of the county.
So one of the things that really appealed to me, and I'm an avid, you know, biker on
bicycles, and I could see that the trail connection would connect to the Forest Preserve trails.
You know, there wasn't a direct connection when we first moved here, but they're building
an underpass in Milwaukee Avenue, and it connected to the river trail on one side and there's
(11:37):
Rollins Savannah on the north, which you have to go through some neighborhoods to get there.
There's no real one trail to get there.
But you know, you can figure it out.
It's not a big deal.
But I love the fact that you could go from here to Wisconsin or Cook County pretty easily,
you know, on a bike.
It's a good distance, but you know, if you're really interested in biking, the trails here
(12:02):
are excellent.
And that was a big plus.
And they've gotten better over the years.
And we've been trying to extend a lot of trails in the Forest Preserve, and we just passed
a referendum.
Thank you for your support out there.
And we're going to finish some more trails, like the Millennium Trail that runs right
through Rollins Savannah.
Yeah, I just read the Daily Herald article about that a week ago, maybe.
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Yeah, we're going to get some capital projects done like that and buy some more land.
And you know, people generally move here for the quality of life and the Forest Preserve.
So we're going to enhance what we have and build upon a great legacy.
And part of that is Prairie Crossings sort of in the middle of it.
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And it's accessible.
I mean, could there be a more integrated community to the rest of Graze Lake?
I think so.
I mean, it's something that's happening slowly in terms of urban planning across the world.
And you know, you can go to Jule.
It's faster to get there on a bike than it is driving.
Yeah, my son walks there sometimes.
(13:05):
Yeah, and you can walk there.
You can walk to Ace or, you know, bike there and go to Dunkin' Donuts or places like that.
And that's a good thing.
The more people who are doing non-motorized transportation, the better, you know, for
the climate and, you know, for pollution, things like that.
So that was a big draw.
And I'm glad we're still working on that here.
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And, you know, we still have some battles to fight and trying to watch what they're
going to do with 120.
IDOT's got a big sort of study in progress.
I've been on that committee and trying to see that they don't build a much bigger highway
that's going to be, you know, unwieldy and cause a lot of pollution.
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So that's one of the many projects I'm involved in and just transportation.
And then the other one is to create the greenway that was the Route 53 corridor.
That's got to be very complex and evolving slowly, but working very hard on that.
It's one of my top priorities as a county commissioner to see that that gets done.
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Yeah, when did you start with the county?
So 99, you moved here, yeah?
Is that what you said, or 96?
Yeah, you know, it's funny, but when I first got in this house, I was thinking, you know,
the people who used to live here back then, the fellow who owned the house was a lawyer,
(14:30):
John Wiley.
He had run for county commissioner.
He didn't win, but somehow some people got me interested and my wife asked me to do it.
And I said, you know, I'm a journalist.
I don't really like politicians.
I've not had a good experience with it, but she said, you know, you can work on environmental
(14:52):
policy.
That's what your real passion is.
So I said, okay.
And got into office in 2018, won a second term and have crafted a climate change policy.
We're trying to get to net zero by 2040 and reduce our landfill input by 60%.
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I mean, all these are really ambitious goals, but it takes concerted effort by the entire
community to get it done.
So I like working on things like that and getting things done, hopefully.
So just about 10 years, no, 20 years after you moved here, did you became 99?
Yeah.
So became commissioner then.
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And you're still a journalist.
So I read the Lincolnomics, I don't know if that's your most recent book.
Yes.
That's one that Wally Winter told me about too.
He is the bookshelf behind you has a stack of his books on it because he asked if I knew
anything about Chicago or Illinois when I moved here.
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And I said that I didn't.
And that in fact, we'd never actually considered moving here until we were given a choice.
And he said, but you're not against learning about it then.
And I said, no.
And then the next day he had a stack of books.
So that's the most recent Wally Winter recommendation was.
Well, it's very kind of Wally.
Wally's been a friend forever.
(16:18):
And we always talk about local history and always got a lot more stories than I do.
But Lincolnomics was a labor of love.
And I did it during COVID.
Most sane people were baking sourdough bread and sampling different kinds of wine extensively.
I decided to write a book about Lincoln and his real first focus was on public works and
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what they called the American plan, which is building infrastructure.
And he had his eyes set on first building canals to link Springfield to the rest of
the world, at least to the Mississippi River system.
And then he was a big champion of the IMM canal, which literally created Chicago as
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not only a commercial center, but as a transportation hub.
And from there it was like you go make a huge quantum leap to the interstate system and
the rail system.
Chicago is still a transportation hub.
So Lincoln was focused on that not just because he was into public works, but he saw it as
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a way to level the playing field for people who didn't live in big eastern cities.
And we would be connected to New Orleans and to the East Coast.
You could get all the way from Chicago through the Erie Canal to New York City and Port of
New York.
And this was in the 1830s.
So the big first obsession was to build these canals that connect the waterways that we
(17:47):
had.
And then of course the railroads became our next sort of interstate transportation mode.
And he was a railroad lawyer for a while.
And just embedded in this idea of, well, if there is such a thing as economic equality,
how do we do that by building better infrastructure?
Bridges and tunnels and canals and ports and things like that.
(18:11):
So it was a really, really fun project.
I lectured all over the country about it.
And I'm just always focused on, well, how did something get there?
So I've done a couple of books on infrastructure that are based on stories of people who did
really profound things.
(18:31):
I did a book on Nikola Tesla, the great genius behind alternating current and our current
electrical system.
Sam Enso who kind of built ComEd and a few other things from scratch and gave us sort
of this distribution network for electricity in the Second Industrial Revolution.
And sort of a lot of things in between.
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But I always like to ask the question at least as a writer is like, well, how do we get here
and where are we at?
So I still think we're in sort of a transition where we have to determine, it's like, okay,
in an era of climate change, how do we build better infrastructure?
And if I've reached any conclusion, it's that we have to organize as communities to grow
(19:15):
more food locally, to restore habitat, and to figure out what our communities should
be like to be more habitable.
Yeah.
I have to say that Lincolnomics, at first I was like, so I studied history in college.
After college, I got kind of, everybody I guess picks an era where they just really
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like, and part of mine was World War II era, but also the Civil War era.
Because I've read, you know, Team Arrivals when that came out, and I've read Shelby Foote's
three volume series on Civil War.
Oh, good for you.
Yeah.
He is so charismatic.
It's huge books, but they're easy to read because, and yeah, he's pretty biased towards
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the South.
But if you appreciate that, just his folksy writing is just fantastic.
Yeah, a friend gave me the three volume set, and so far I've gotten through volume one,
and I will finish the whole thing.
I have a few other things to get through.
But I love the whole anti-villain period before the Civil War.
The remarkable thing is that the things that Lincoln accomplished, you know, establishing
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the Transcontinental Railroad, the Morrill Act, which established land-grant colleges
like the U of I and every state college just about, that all happened at the height of
the Civil War.
He established the first national bank, you know, established the greenback as the dollar,
you know, system of currency.
I mean, just all these incredible things that nobody really thinks of as happening during
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the Civil War is like Lincoln pushed all these things forward.
Yeah, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but you know, to people that are interested
in this, the smaller Congress must have helped, right?
Not having an oppositional South to push things.
Absolutely.
The things that he needed to pass his real passionate projects were done a lot easier
(21:12):
without having opposition from the Southern states.
That's just the political reality.
And a lot of the things that happened after he was assassinated just kind of fell apart,
except for the Transcontinental Railroad, which became a reality in 1869.
And then it changed the country.
Well, what I have to say I appreciate about Lincolnomics and what I was getting at was
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like, oh, another Lincoln book, but it actually wasn't because it was not about the war, which
almost every Lincoln book is about the war.
And that kind of his origin story is often glanced over in the first few chapters of
the book.
And I felt like you gave it more of its due as to who he became.
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You also didn't forget where it came from, the land or whatever.
And the first time I think I've read the phrase Euro-American, because if you're going to
talk about Native Americans, that makes a lot of sense.
But also I left with this sense of wonder about Lincolnomics, about this idea of industrialization.
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But then also here we are living with the consequences of that kind of industrialization.
And still the carbon dioxide admitted then is still here now and warming things up.
And wondering if there's any point when if they'd stopped when you got to Eisenhower,
I was like, that might have been the tipping point.
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That might have been too far, the car culture that we have.
It's just interesting in reading at one point being appreciative of the leadership and the
vision of people like that, but then also realizing the consequences that we have to
deal with now because of that is something I'm still thinking about after reading it.
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Yeah, it's one of those tough big questions where you can say as a social observer, yes,
we need to rethink infrastructure and that will be less carbon intensive.
And then the second question is like, how do we do that?
I mean, there's a lot of people say, well, you know, more electric vehicles, you know,
more public transportation, and there's a whole list of things.
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But you know, rethinking it means how do we do this communally as a people so that we
are changing our habits and we're on bikes more, we're just, you know, not in cars all
the time, or we're walking more or talking to our neighbors more.
And I think the big revolution is going to happen on our front porches where we just
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start talking each other again.
And we figure out, well, you know, maybe it is a good idea for creating more habitat in
your yards.
Well, how do we do that?
Well, we exchange ideas, we start saying, well, you don't want that in your yard.
Or you know, one of the things we did a couple of years ago, there was a program called Conservation
at Home, which was, you know, well, now it's taken over by open lands and I have a lot
(24:05):
of friends over there.
But the whole thing was like, well, what if you at least move towards naturalizing your
yard, meaning more native plants, and doing native flowers, you know, creating habitat
for rusty patch bumblebees.
And it's just, it's something that's foreign to a lot of people because, you know, we grew
(24:26):
up in this culture, the post-war culture is like, everybody should have that quarter acre,
the lawn should be perfect, we should water it, we should fertilize it, we should put
pesticides on stuff where there's bugs.
And it's just like, it's hard to unthink that because it's such a cultural meme.
But you know, if you're thinking, well, if you're creating habitat, it's a different
(24:47):
mindset.
But it's more comforting because nature is all around you.
And if you're trying to create an anti-habitat, then it's, you know, it's less beneficial
to the planet.
I mean, it's just something that we're just beginning to realize.
So it's something where, you know, once people think about it, my wife has a really great
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book club and everybody's invited.
We're discussing Nature's Best Hope, which is a Doug Talamy book.
And it's all about, you know, what if you turn your yard into like a park?
Here's a really obscure fact that there's more acreage devoted to lawns across America
than there is to all the acreage in all of our national parks.
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So what if, you know, a significant percentage of that was naturalized into, you know, viable
habitat?
What would that mean?
Well, it would absorb carbon.
It would absorb stormwater.
It would not need to be fertilized or covered with pesticides.
And the chemical inputs would go down and the amount of carbon absorbed by prairie plants
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would go up.
You know, it's something that requires a lot of thought and a lot of dedication.
Believe me, I've been yanking a lot of stuff that shouldn't be in our yard, but it feels
good.
Yeah, I feel like it's a little bit of a trade off.
I mean, I don't know if listeners could hear, but there's a lawn mower going in the background.
(26:18):
That's my lawn mower.
I share it with my neighbor.
He has the more traditional lawn.
I have more of a prairie lawn established by that couple that you talked about.
I have no idea how to manage it still four years in, but I'm working on it.
He can be done.
He's got to use gasoline for most of it to get his yard where he wants it to look like.
(26:43):
I have to go out there and pull weeds and wear gloves and sweat a little bit.
But again, then also I'm not raking leaves.
I'm not blowing leaves.
I leave them where they are and then I run them over with the mower in the spring if
they're in the little bit of grass that I have.
Two different contrasting worlds.
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I came here thinking that I didn't have to do any work because I hate yard work.
If anything, it's more a matter of changing the narrative.
All of us are thinking, well, we should rake these leaves to the front so waste management
can vacuum them up.
I'm thinking, okay, what if I was creating habitat for fireflies, for bumblebees, for
(27:26):
all sorts of caterpillars and animals that will live under the leaves and in an oak ecosystem
which we're trying to restore will thrive.
They need the leaves and the leaves can be mulch for your garden or they're just covering
for fireflies that need to winter over.
(27:47):
Just think of the last couple summers.
It's been hard to see fireflies.
Yeah, there was that discussion about that in the middle of the summer on PsychoChat.
We sit out on our deck and just watch them, but it's been demonstrably less since even
we moved here.
Nothing that I can see has changed, at least in my little patch in the back, but yeah,
(28:11):
it's hard to know.
Right?
The good news is the bug population, mostly beneficial bugs, has crashed a lot because
of loss of habitat and chemicals and stuff like that, but the good news is that you can
restore it.
Really, you'll see the benefits immediately, especially if you're, say, planting a pollinator
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garden, habitat for monarchs.
I was at a conference, I'm studying to be a master naturalist, and there's thousands
of bugs that are pollinators that you wouldn't even think of.
Mosquitoes can pollinate.
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Who would have thought?
I'd say honeybees are not necessary.
They're kind of cattle, aren't they?
Honeybees are men.
Well, most of the honeybees around here are European species, but there are native bees
to Illinois that most people have no idea.
It's like, yeah, there's bees native in Illinois.
There's all sorts of species we probably haven't even seen.
(29:18):
Most people don't know that 40% of Illinois was once a forest.
It's been kind of plowed over, and 60% of it was prairie.
It's hard to celebrate.
I was thinking about John Deere's plow from your book.
It's hard to celebrate that now in a way because look what we've lost in a way because of it.
(29:40):
I might not be here if you hadn't, but yeah, it's hard to think that it was at less than
1% of natural prairie still in Illinois, right?
Yeah, it's like 0.0001%.
It's just way to the right of the decimal point.
Basically none.
Is it being restored in some places?
Yes.
I found this out, I was down near Northwest Indiana for a conference on Friday.
(30:06):
It was down near where I grew up, and what was remarkable was that there was one area
where my grandmother worked during World War II, an ammunitions plant, which had been restored
to a national tall grass prairie.
It's called the Midewin Prairie down kind of near Joliet.
It was called the Joliet Ammunitions Plant.
(30:27):
We stopped there on the way back from a vacation, and it was closed at the time.
I desperately want to see buffalo out in the prairie.
Yeah, they have buffalo out there.
They have buffalo up in Batavian.
The longer term plan is to create habitat for buffalo, which they were part of the ecosystem.
(30:47):
We actually took, when my daughters were younger, we took them down to Midewin.
I was like, well, this is really how most of Illinois looked like, and with the buffalo.
Buffalo aren't, they're not border collies, they're not that friendly, but it's good to
see them.
Talk to some Native Americans, and they have a special way of looking at it, but it requires
(31:11):
a different narrative, a new story.
It's like, well, how do we live better with the land?
Well, we shouldn't regard bugs as enemies.
We shouldn't regard grass as the perfect thing for our yards.
It's okay if you want it, and say your kids are still playing soccer, but after that,
it's like, well, there are other things you can do.
(31:33):
Yeah.
Actually, we utilize on wild iris here, that green patch in the middle that helps with
stormwater management, but that's our front yard.
That's where the Frisbee for Watson who just left the room.
Our neighbors, we all picnic in there in the summer when we have get togethers.
Individual events happen in our backyards, but community happens in those shared spaces,
(31:57):
and Calamas is like another great example.
We love to go, we have little ones, so they play on the playground and the dog.
So on the leash, but Luce catches his ball and stays nearby.
Yeah, that shared community on your front porch, I suppose, conversations are the pleasant
(32:18):
part, I think, the most pleasant part about Prairie Crossing.
I just read a little bit about in the next Meadow Mix about George's beach and the idea
that we could have had a pool and that George and Vicki said no, have had a beach instead,
and that we might not have had that kind of communal space in that way, a pool is communal
(32:41):
space, but in that way, with the connection to nature, that if they hadn't made that decision,
which is part of the reason that name was given to the beach.
The whole principle behind the design of Prairie Crossing is to get people out talking to their
neighbors.
When I look at typical suburbia, I'm always studying this because I'm sort of an inveterate
(33:05):
student of urban planning, is that a lot of houses are designed without porches, and there's
no real way to interact.
They're like three-car garages with attached homes.
Yeah, we purposely did not buy houses where the garage is the main feature.
It really is the main architectural feature of a lot of homes.
And how do you facilitate interaction, it's like, well, porches are a great thing, and
(33:29):
then trails, another thing, and then just having them clustered together in pods the
way they did here.
And there was a lot of planning involved in that, and it was all designed to get people
to look at their neighbors and actually talk to them and interact with them.
So that's still happening here.
(33:50):
We've had waves of people come and go, and that happens everywhere, but it's important
to say, well, why don't we just have a bonfire?
And we do that in our prairie orchid fire pit, which was designed for that purpose,
second Thursday of the month, and unless the weather's really bad or some people are out
(34:10):
of town, we make an effort and everything's on the table.
It's like BYOB, and it's like, what's going on?
And then there are little things like there is a bottle opener nailed to one of the posts
that hold up the blackberries.
That little nice touch that there are many down by the beach also, just nice little tactile
(34:37):
things that just facilitate life here.
I think about those all the time.
Someone thought of that, I don't know how long ago, but they put that there, the little
library that the Bar Horse Children put up as part of their project.
We go to that all the time down by the beach.
And some of the events are just enshrined in living here, like Fight Fest.
(35:00):
I'm glad that's still going and more people are getting involved and some new faces.
I love unloading and loading kids onto the hay wagon.
It's so much fun to hear them.
You're like, oh, what's going to happen?
Keep your arms in, the zombies are hungry.
They kind of look at me like, what?
But there's other things, like the Father's Day pig roast has been going on for a while.
(35:23):
The event leading up to that is Gary Zipfel, our neighbor, has sponsored the sauce making
with the guys and they're playing croquet.
So it's just a really big fun thing.
I was in a band here for a while that was called Prairie Fog and we would play every
St. Patrick's Day for a potluck.
I think I went to the last one of those.
(35:45):
And that was so much fun because it brought people in and we're playing jigs and reels
and Johnny Cash and a whole bunch of stuff.
But you know, it's the main point is like, well, how do you get people together?
You have to do stuff and you have to be deliberate about it and you have to get them in one room
or one space or just kind of start talking to them.
I also find that, which is one of the reasons I don't appreciate the listserv, is that you
(36:11):
are not looking people in the eye when you're having the disagreements that happen on there.
And I kind of feel like when we have an event like that, those anxieties or disagreements
or vitriol melts away when you see that that person owns a house just like you do and they
(36:32):
are there for the pickers just like you are.
And that really we don't disagree on all that much if we are disagreeing on a certain issue.
And I think and part of this was due to COVID, part of it was just our more, you know, wired
in age is that we become disconnected from the human reality is like, you really have
(36:52):
to like talk to somebody, find out what's going on with them.
You know, some people are going through some some pretty bad times or just things are not
going well and you can find out.
But you have to engage on a much deeper level and that goes beyond social media or listservs
and just understand is like that's not real total communication.
(37:14):
Yeah, now, four episodes in I'm meeting people that I've never hung out with before I started
easy, you know, with Wally and Ellen and and I wanted Sonny and Stuart on we'll try to
get them still but more people have been in my house because of the podcast.
And we've we've had the neighborhood here but that's about it.
(37:36):
And yeah, just to get to know people like like we're talking right now, I knew you as
the county board member.
I didn't know the connection with the Forest Preserve but I knew that you cared deeply about
it.
And I read your newsletter as part of the that work but I didn't know anything about
that and Kathleen knocking on my door asking me to sign the ballot.
(37:57):
Yeah, and Kathleen was president of the high school board for a couple of years and she
served the community well and really helped transform Grayslake Central into the great
school that it is now and actually helped establish the program where high school kids
are learning at the farm now.
So she was a big influence there and it's it's all good because you know when you're
(38:21):
in high school how often you get to go to a real farm and grow things and get credit
for it.
So I'm also working on a internship program with CLC we get kids in the Forest Preserve
and get credit and get paid and get some experiences like there's a lot of work to do.
And my only plug for the Forest Preserve anybody wants to volunteer to do restoration work
we always have openings.
(38:43):
It's a good crowd.
And what are you working on now?
You said you were close to having a book serialized.
I'm working on my book The Natural Neighborhood and sort of looking for an agent and a publisher
and I might just publish it myself.
I haven't really decided but I do like one chapter a month and then the rest of the newsletters
(39:08):
you know things kind of leading up to that.
I'm having so much fun with it because I don't have to report to an editor I don't have to
stay in my lane about a certain subject.
I mean for years I wrote books on personal finance and retirement and they did okay but
it's it's not the same thing as something you are really deeply engaged in believing.
So I'm just it's it's just a thrill and the theme of it is refinement.
(39:33):
So people ask me are you retired are you going to retire?
I was like well no I'm in the process of refinement and trying to get better at what I really
care about you know which is a variety of things but mostly writing, communication,
speaking and then you know music and drawing to some extent and doing work out in the community.
(39:54):
I guess when people ask about retirement it's about freedom to kind of do what you want
and it kind of sounds like you're actually doing what you want so why would you consider
yourself retired?
Yeah I mean it's it's not a question of doing less it's a question of doing more that really
counts.
I mean you have to do this very simple evaluation is like well what makes you feel most alive?
(40:19):
And to me it's it's it's it's a handful of things I know exactly what they are and you
know I like to be out in the middle of summer yanking sweet white clover with Jim O'Connor
and my neighbors and talking and just doing stuff like that and working in my yard and
riding my bike and exploring a new trail and just it's it's all part of the adventure.
(40:41):
I mean the narrative is is to see what it is that you have not noticed and maybe passed
by a million times.
So it's like finding that hidden detail in in the ordinary.
I was riding down a trail past Carmel High School and I noticed this little sign that
said Libertyville Nature Preserve.
(41:03):
I was like there's a nature preserve here?
I've been by this million times.
I was like what is this?
There's a little sign on the spur and the highway department put up a sign.
I was like turn left okay turn left go off the trail.
Sure enough there's a little nature preserve in between you know suburban homes and two
busy highways and it's like jeez I never knew this was here and I used to live in Libertyville.
(41:26):
I was like how can that be?
I was like well it's a discovery of something was like in nature and in your built environment.
It's like it's a wonderful serendipitous thing.
All right well let's leave it there.
John Wasik thank you so much for being on the Iran Like Podcast.
I'm humbled to have you here.
(41:47):
Thank you Dan and if anybody wants to get a hold of me the best way is through email
johnwasik at gmail.com.
You want to see my newsletter I'll put you on the list.
It doesn't cost you anything and you can get off anytime and of course you need to communicate
to me about Forest Preserve or County Matters.
You can use that email too and I'm happy to talk to anybody.
(42:08):
I get back to everybody as best I can so.
Fantastic all right well thank you again.
Thank you Dan.
Well that's our episode for this week.
I want to thank everyone for listening and again to John for his time.
(42:32):
I actually have now and we talked about the drought of interviews.
I think we are set through the end of the year.
At least I have some some context so the podcast rolls on and I meant it about my walk around
the lake.
If anybody wants to meet me at the next full moon I don't know what it is but we you know
(42:55):
we can talk about it.
You can email me reply back to my email or around the lake pc at gmail.com.
I had to get a generic email address for the podcast site so join me and we if not we will
talk to you at the next podcast.
Hey, neighbors.
(00:02):
Welcome to Around the Lake podcast.
I am once again on a walk with Fletcher and Watson.
It is November, late, late November.
It's Sunday.
I gotta look at my watch, but I think it's the 19th.
And it's not the 19th.
(00:24):
It's the 17th.
And it's beautiful.
It's just balmy, right?
This is October weather, not November weather.
There's a full moon, or there nearly a full moon, I think last night or Friday night was
a full moon.
The lake trail is just glowing and the white limestone is just glowing and the moon fog
(00:50):
is settled in over the prairie.
Fletcher and Watson are sniffing, it smells different at night, I guess, than during the
day at the edges of the trail.
This week our guest is John Wasik, author, journalist, elected official, and neighbor
(01:11):
since 1999 when Prairie Crossing was still brand new.
We talk in our conversation about one of his books that I read in preparation of this interview,
Lincolnomics and the impact Lincoln had on how we grow as a people economically with
(01:41):
internal improvements and colleges and land grant colleges and what we did to the native
peoples of this land.
Really a refreshing look at Lincoln as a many civil war buff.
I've enjoyed everything about Lincoln is about the war and John's book is not.
(02:05):
It's about what Lincoln did despite the war.
So there's plenty here if you're not a civil war person, but there is a conversation.
And about, you know, again, kind of focusing on conservation.
Really because of that development that we've seen, that we've seen since Lincoln, the 1830s,
(02:30):
our prairie is almost gone.
As we talked about with Jim O'Connor last time.
Speaking of last time, it's been a minute, it's been a month.
I planned to do these every other week, it just didn't work out.
But some of the interviews I lined up and some of the people I wanted to talk to.
(02:51):
But we kind of needed that time, didn't we?
Lots changed since that last podcast.
Whole world's changed and maybe not the better for conservation, but maybe sometimes in opposition,
in opposition, conservation efforts actually do better.
(03:13):
I don't have it in front of me since I'm walking, but during the George W. Bush administration,
there's a lot of progress, mate.
So let's hope, right, for all our sakes.
And as I look up at that moon, I think I'd like if you, anyone would like to join me
on the next full moon walk, we could maybe lap the lake together, enjoy the darkness
(03:39):
and the light that the full moon gives.
Just appreciating together and some of this beautiful surroundings.
If you'd like to do that, go ahead and email me at aroundthelakepc at gmail.com.
But anyway, here is John and I hope you enjoy this episode.
(04:00):
Got a hot mic?
Yeah.
All right, John Woczak, welcome to the Around the Lake podcast.
Well, thanks for having me.
Tell me about yourself.
We don't know each other too well, so tell me.
Well, I'm an author and a journalist.
I've written 19 books, working on my 20th and published all over the place.
(04:24):
I was a columnist for Bloomberg and Writers for a while and then I contributed to New
York Times, Wall Street Journal.
Now I'm writing for Next Avenue, which is a PBS site and, you know, occasional piece
for the Sun Times and, you know, mostly the kind of writing I'm doing now is focusing
on environmental topics and really how people can approach the subject on a hyper local
(04:50):
level.
My new book is being serialized through my newsletter's substack called Refinement.
And it's a serialized version of, well, if you were to do something in your neighborhood,
what would it look like?
It's a series of vignettes on people doing really important things on a daily basis.
(05:11):
And that's what really gets my juices flowing.
Can you give us an example?
What's one of those stories?
Yeah, well, so for example, I came across a couple of people who found a rusty patched
bumblebee.
Now, for those people who are not engaged in bee lore, the rusty patched bumblebee is
(05:32):
a federally endangered species.
I ran into three people who really didn't know each other at all who had seen them and
had documented them and sort of uploaded the images to an app called iNaturalist and were
confirmed.
So it was like, how often do you see a federally endangered species, right?
(05:53):
So I'm, you know, as a forest preserve commissioner, I was like, yeah, well, where'd you see it?
And they told me and I can't tell anybody.
I was like, oh, yeah, I tell you, you know, you have to get through security clearance
and that won't work.
So it was just kind of a thrill.
I mean, little things like that.
So I do a lot of volunteer restoration work, local forest preserves.
I've been doing it here at Prairie Crossing for 25 years that we've lived here, occasional
(06:16):
burn and, you know, pulling invasive species, things like that.
So all that is about building community in a very direct way because you're doing something
with somebody else that's very productive.
I mean, I have to tell you, even in the middle of summer when there's bugs out and it's really
hot and you're really sticky, you know, you yank up a bunch of sweet white clover and
(06:40):
it's one of the best feelings.
I don't know why.
I mean, I do other things like I bike all the trails and I hike and we camp a little
bit and we do the things that a lot of people like to do.
But you know, the most satisfying thing is like, hey, you know, we worked with a bunch
of neighbors to clear that area over there and look at it now.
It's really coming back.
(07:02):
So lately it's more about creating habitat.
So my origin story is at least as an environmentalist and perhaps as a forest preserve commissioner
is that 30 years ago we lived in unincorporated Wakanda and we had two horses.
So we bought this really ramshackle ranch and it was just, it was just place should
(07:25):
have burned down.
We spent nine years remodeling it and tending to the horses.
My wife had a business.
I was working in the city as a magazine editor on a terrible commute and you know, it was
a beautiful piece of property with a 150 year old cottonwood on it and they had a barn that
we had to fix up and excuse me, the horses took up a lot of time.
(07:49):
So it was one of those places where you had to love it to be there and then, you know,
after a while babies came along and said, well, we got to have a really decent neighborhood
in which to raise our two daughters.
And so we started looking around.
(08:10):
We came across Prairie Crossing at the time it was just half built.
But I read a couple articles about it and we started talking to people and it was one
of the nation's first conservation communities, meaning that, you know, the homes were designed
to be energy efficient for that time, which was 1999.
(08:34):
No solar panels or anything, but you know, they did the best they could at that, you
know, time in history.
And it had a lot of open space.
It had a working organic farm, things we have today, which have really evolved over the
years in a lot of interesting ways.
But those are the kinds of things that really attracted us.
(08:58):
When our girls were young, they were hen house helpers and they collected eggs and were always
at the farm getting dirty and, you know, really getting engaged in what was going on, you
know, all around them.
And, you know, we have an orchard across from us and we live on Prairie Orchid.
And it's an actively cultivated, you know, place where you can get persimmons and apples
(09:20):
and blackberries and raspberries and even pawpaws now that are coming along slowly.
It's a very difficult route.
You know, I saw an article about how warming climate might mean that pawpaws get more of
a chance to make it to market.
I couldn't believe that after I just learned what a pawpaw was that here.
It's a very fickle fruit, unlike a banana, which you can keep on the shelf for about
(09:43):
a week.
Pawpaw, you got to sell it that day.
And it's just you got to eat it right away and it goes bad really quickly.
But it's an interesting little fruit and it's native too.
Yeah.
I mean, it'd be a while before we can grow bananas here.
Hopefully it won't be that hot.
But, you know, that's something we can grow here.
So your wife is Kathleen.
What are your daughter's names?
(10:04):
Sarah is the oldest and she's living in the city and working and working on her MBA.
And Julia is our youngest.
She's also living in the city and working and working on her graduate education and
both went to Grayslake Central High School.
Nice, nice.
When, give us a visual, like what, when you first turned into Prairie Crossing to go look
(10:26):
at building sites or your, you know, how's, I don't know if you built your house, what,
what did it look like?
What was not here?
What was here?
Well, it was very much a work in progress.
The trail behind our house was still a half open road, which, you know, construction trucks
were going down and we were told it was going to be closed.
And then I had sort of a tiff with one of the developers is like, you know, we don't
(10:50):
really want construction trucks, you know, driving on the trail behind our house.
So we got, that was, you know, Rizal.
But you know, most of the trails here were actually farm roads.
And later converted into our trail system.
And then as we connected to other trails, it became, you know, more of a sort of connection
(11:13):
to the rest of the county.
So one of the things that really appealed to me, and I'm an avid, you know, biker on
bicycles, and I could see that the trail connection would connect to the Forest Preserve trails.
You know, there wasn't a direct connection when we first moved here, but they're building
an underpass in Milwaukee Avenue, and it connected to the river trail on one side and there's
(11:37):
Rollins Savannah on the north, which you have to go through some neighborhoods to get there.
There's no real one trail to get there.
But you know, you can figure it out.
It's not a big deal.
But I love the fact that you could go from here to Wisconsin or Cook County pretty easily,
you know, on a bike.
It's a good distance, but you know, if you're really interested in biking, the trails here
(12:02):
are excellent.
And that was a big plus.
And they've gotten better over the years.
And we've been trying to extend a lot of trails in the Forest Preserve, and we just passed
a referendum.
Thank you for your support out there.
And we're going to finish some more trails, like the Millennium Trail that runs right
through Rollins Savannah.
Yeah, I just read the Daily Herald article about that a week ago, maybe.
(12:24):
Yeah, we're going to get some capital projects done like that and buy some more land.
And you know, people generally move here for the quality of life and the Forest Preserve.
So we're going to enhance what we have and build upon a great legacy.
And part of that is Prairie Crossings sort of in the middle of it.
(12:45):
And it's accessible.
I mean, could there be a more integrated community to the rest of Graze Lake?
I think so.
I mean, it's something that's happening slowly in terms of urban planning across the world.
And you know, you can go to Jule.
It's faster to get there on a bike than it is driving.
Yeah, my son walks there sometimes.
(13:05):
Yeah, and you can walk there.
You can walk to Ace or, you know, bike there and go to Dunkin' Donuts or places like that.
And that's a good thing.
The more people who are doing non-motorized transportation, the better, you know, for
the climate and, you know, for pollution, things like that.
So that was a big draw.
And I'm glad we're still working on that here.
(13:27):
And, you know, we still have some battles to fight and trying to watch what they're
going to do with 120.
IDOT's got a big sort of study in progress.
I've been on that committee and trying to see that they don't build a much bigger highway
that's going to be, you know, unwieldy and cause a lot of pollution.
(13:48):
So that's one of the many projects I'm involved in and just transportation.
And then the other one is to create the greenway that was the Route 53 corridor.
That's got to be very complex and evolving slowly, but working very hard on that.
It's one of my top priorities as a county commissioner to see that that gets done.
(14:10):
Yeah, when did you start with the county?
So 99, you moved here, yeah?
Is that what you said, or 96?
Yeah, you know, it's funny, but when I first got in this house, I was thinking, you know,
the people who used to live here back then, the fellow who owned the house was a lawyer,
(14:30):
John Wiley.
He had run for county commissioner.
He didn't win, but somehow some people got me interested and my wife asked me to do it.
And I said, you know, I'm a journalist.
I don't really like politicians.
I've not had a good experience with it, but she said, you know, you can work on environmental
(14:52):
policy.
That's what your real passion is.
So I said, okay.
And got into office in 2018, won a second term and have crafted a climate change policy.
We're trying to get to net zero by 2040 and reduce our landfill input by 60%.
(15:14):
I mean, all these are really ambitious goals, but it takes concerted effort by the entire
community to get it done.
So I like working on things like that and getting things done, hopefully.
So just about 10 years, no, 20 years after you moved here, did you became 99?
Yeah.
So became commissioner then.
(15:34):
And you're still a journalist.
So I read the Lincolnomics, I don't know if that's your most recent book.
Yes.
That's one that Wally Winter told me about too.
He is the bookshelf behind you has a stack of his books on it because he asked if I knew
anything about Chicago or Illinois when I moved here.
(15:56):
And I said that I didn't.
And that in fact, we'd never actually considered moving here until we were given a choice.
And he said, but you're not against learning about it then.
And I said, no.
And then the next day he had a stack of books.
So that's the most recent Wally Winter recommendation was.
Well, it's very kind of Wally.
Wally's been a friend forever.
(16:18):
And we always talk about local history and always got a lot more stories than I do.
But Lincolnomics was a labor of love.
And I did it during COVID.
Most sane people were baking sourdough bread and sampling different kinds of wine extensively.
I decided to write a book about Lincoln and his real first focus was on public works and
(16:40):
what they called the American plan, which is building infrastructure.
And he had his eyes set on first building canals to link Springfield to the rest of
the world, at least to the Mississippi River system.
And then he was a big champion of the IMM canal, which literally created Chicago as
(17:02):
not only a commercial center, but as a transportation hub.
And from there it was like you go make a huge quantum leap to the interstate system and
the rail system.
Chicago is still a transportation hub.
So Lincoln was focused on that not just because he was into public works, but he saw it as
(17:23):
a way to level the playing field for people who didn't live in big eastern cities.
And we would be connected to New Orleans and to the East Coast.
You could get all the way from Chicago through the Erie Canal to New York City and Port of
New York.
And this was in the 1830s.
So the big first obsession was to build these canals that connect the waterways that we
(17:47):
had.
And then of course the railroads became our next sort of interstate transportation mode.
And he was a railroad lawyer for a while.
And just embedded in this idea of, well, if there is such a thing as economic equality,
how do we do that by building better infrastructure?
Bridges and tunnels and canals and ports and things like that.
(18:11):
So it was a really, really fun project.
I lectured all over the country about it.
And I'm just always focused on, well, how did something get there?
So I've done a couple of books on infrastructure that are based on stories of people who did
really profound things.
(18:31):
I did a book on Nikola Tesla, the great genius behind alternating current and our current
electrical system.
Sam Enso who kind of built ComEd and a few other things from scratch and gave us sort
of this distribution network for electricity in the Second Industrial Revolution.
And sort of a lot of things in between.
(18:54):
But I always like to ask the question at least as a writer is like, well, how do we get here
and where are we at?
So I still think we're in sort of a transition where we have to determine, it's like, okay,
in an era of climate change, how do we build better infrastructure?
And if I've reached any conclusion, it's that we have to organize as communities to grow
(19:15):
more food locally, to restore habitat, and to figure out what our communities should
be like to be more habitable.
Yeah.
I have to say that Lincolnomics, at first I was like, so I studied history in college.
After college, I got kind of, everybody I guess picks an era where they just really
(19:37):
like, and part of mine was World War II era, but also the Civil War era.
Because I've read, you know, Team Arrivals when that came out, and I've read Shelby Foote's
three volume series on Civil War.
Oh, good for you.
Yeah.
He is so charismatic.
It's huge books, but they're easy to read because, and yeah, he's pretty biased towards
(19:58):
the South.
But if you appreciate that, just his folksy writing is just fantastic.
Yeah, a friend gave me the three volume set, and so far I've gotten through volume one,
and I will finish the whole thing.
I have a few other things to get through.
But I love the whole anti-villain period before the Civil War.
The remarkable thing is that the things that Lincoln accomplished, you know, establishing
(20:22):
the Transcontinental Railroad, the Morrill Act, which established land-grant colleges
like the U of I and every state college just about, that all happened at the height of
the Civil War.
He established the first national bank, you know, established the greenback as the dollar,
you know, system of currency.
I mean, just all these incredible things that nobody really thinks of as happening during
(20:46):
the Civil War is like Lincoln pushed all these things forward.
Yeah, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but you know, to people that are interested
in this, the smaller Congress must have helped, right?
Not having an oppositional South to push things.
Absolutely.
The things that he needed to pass his real passionate projects were done a lot easier
(21:12):
without having opposition from the Southern states.
That's just the political reality.
And a lot of the things that happened after he was assassinated just kind of fell apart,
except for the Transcontinental Railroad, which became a reality in 1869.
And then it changed the country.
Well, what I have to say I appreciate about Lincolnomics and what I was getting at was
(21:34):
like, oh, another Lincoln book, but it actually wasn't because it was not about the war, which
almost every Lincoln book is about the war.
And that kind of his origin story is often glanced over in the first few chapters of
the book.
And I felt like you gave it more of its due as to who he became.
(21:55):
You also didn't forget where it came from, the land or whatever.
And the first time I think I've read the phrase Euro-American, because if you're going to
talk about Native Americans, that makes a lot of sense.
But also I left with this sense of wonder about Lincolnomics, about this idea of industrialization.
(22:17):
But then also here we are living with the consequences of that kind of industrialization.
And still the carbon dioxide admitted then is still here now and warming things up.
And wondering if there's any point when if they'd stopped when you got to Eisenhower,
I was like, that might have been the tipping point.
(22:37):
That might have been too far, the car culture that we have.
It's just interesting in reading at one point being appreciative of the leadership and the
vision of people like that, but then also realizing the consequences that we have to
deal with now because of that is something I'm still thinking about after reading it.
(22:59):
Yeah, it's one of those tough big questions where you can say as a social observer, yes,
we need to rethink infrastructure and that will be less carbon intensive.
And then the second question is like, how do we do that?
I mean, there's a lot of people say, well, you know, more electric vehicles, you know,
more public transportation, and there's a whole list of things.
(23:22):
But you know, rethinking it means how do we do this communally as a people so that we
are changing our habits and we're on bikes more, we're just, you know, not in cars all
the time, or we're walking more or talking to our neighbors more.
And I think the big revolution is going to happen on our front porches where we just
(23:42):
start talking each other again.
And we figure out, well, you know, maybe it is a good idea for creating more habitat in
your yards.
Well, how do we do that?
Well, we exchange ideas, we start saying, well, you don't want that in your yard.
Or you know, one of the things we did a couple of years ago, there was a program called Conservation
at Home, which was, you know, well, now it's taken over by open lands and I have a lot
(24:05):
of friends over there.
But the whole thing was like, well, what if you at least move towards naturalizing your
yard, meaning more native plants, and doing native flowers, you know, creating habitat
for rusty patch bumblebees.
And it's just, it's something that's foreign to a lot of people because, you know, we grew
(24:26):
up in this culture, the post-war culture is like, everybody should have that quarter acre,
the lawn should be perfect, we should water it, we should fertilize it, we should put
pesticides on stuff where there's bugs.
And it's just like, it's hard to unthink that because it's such a cultural meme.
But you know, if you're thinking, well, if you're creating habitat, it's a different
(24:47):
mindset.
But it's more comforting because nature is all around you.
And if you're trying to create an anti-habitat, then it's, you know, it's less beneficial
to the planet.
I mean, it's just something that we're just beginning to realize.
So it's something where, you know, once people think about it, my wife has a really great
(25:10):
book club and everybody's invited.
We're discussing Nature's Best Hope, which is a Doug Talamy book.
And it's all about, you know, what if you turn your yard into like a park?
Here's a really obscure fact that there's more acreage devoted to lawns across America
than there is to all the acreage in all of our national parks.
(25:33):
So what if, you know, a significant percentage of that was naturalized into, you know, viable
habitat?
What would that mean?
Well, it would absorb carbon.
It would absorb stormwater.
It would not need to be fertilized or covered with pesticides.
And the chemical inputs would go down and the amount of carbon absorbed by prairie plants
(25:58):
would go up.
You know, it's something that requires a lot of thought and a lot of dedication.
Believe me, I've been yanking a lot of stuff that shouldn't be in our yard, but it feels
good.
Yeah, I feel like it's a little bit of a trade off.
I mean, I don't know if listeners could hear, but there's a lawn mower going in the background.
(26:18):
That's my lawn mower.
I share it with my neighbor.
He has the more traditional lawn.
I have more of a prairie lawn established by that couple that you talked about.
I have no idea how to manage it still four years in, but I'm working on it.
He can be done.
He's got to use gasoline for most of it to get his yard where he wants it to look like.
(26:43):
I have to go out there and pull weeds and wear gloves and sweat a little bit.
But again, then also I'm not raking leaves.
I'm not blowing leaves.
I leave them where they are and then I run them over with the mower in the spring if
they're in the little bit of grass that I have.
Two different contrasting worlds.
(27:03):
I came here thinking that I didn't have to do any work because I hate yard work.
If anything, it's more a matter of changing the narrative.
All of us are thinking, well, we should rake these leaves to the front so waste management
can vacuum them up.
I'm thinking, okay, what if I was creating habitat for fireflies, for bumblebees, for
(27:26):
all sorts of caterpillars and animals that will live under the leaves and in an oak ecosystem
which we're trying to restore will thrive.
They need the leaves and the leaves can be mulch for your garden or they're just covering
for fireflies that need to winter over.
(27:47):
Just think of the last couple summers.
It's been hard to see fireflies.
Yeah, there was that discussion about that in the middle of the summer on PsychoChat.
We sit out on our deck and just watch them, but it's been demonstrably less since even
we moved here.
Nothing that I can see has changed, at least in my little patch in the back, but yeah,
(28:11):
it's hard to know.
Right?
The good news is the bug population, mostly beneficial bugs, has crashed a lot because
of loss of habitat and chemicals and stuff like that, but the good news is that you can
restore it.
Really, you'll see the benefits immediately, especially if you're, say, planting a pollinator
(28:34):
garden, habitat for monarchs.
I was at a conference, I'm studying to be a master naturalist, and there's thousands
of bugs that are pollinators that you wouldn't even think of.
Mosquitoes can pollinate.
(28:55):
Who would have thought?
I'd say honeybees are not necessary.
They're kind of cattle, aren't they?
Honeybees are men.
Well, most of the honeybees around here are European species, but there are native bees
to Illinois that most people have no idea.
It's like, yeah, there's bees native in Illinois.
There's all sorts of species we probably haven't even seen.
(29:18):
Most people don't know that 40% of Illinois was once a forest.
It's been kind of plowed over, and 60% of it was prairie.
It's hard to celebrate.
I was thinking about John Deere's plow from your book.
It's hard to celebrate that now in a way because look what we've lost in a way because of it.
(29:40):
I might not be here if you hadn't, but yeah, it's hard to think that it was at less than
1% of natural prairie still in Illinois, right?
Yeah, it's like 0.0001%.
It's just way to the right of the decimal point.
Basically none.
Is it being restored in some places?
Yes.
I found this out, I was down near Northwest Indiana for a conference on Friday.
(30:06):
It was down near where I grew up, and what was remarkable was that there was one area
where my grandmother worked during World War II, an ammunitions plant, which had been restored
to a national tall grass prairie.
It's called the Midewin Prairie down kind of near Joliet.
It was called the Joliet Ammunitions Plant.
(30:27):
We stopped there on the way back from a vacation, and it was closed at the time.
I desperately want to see buffalo out in the prairie.
Yeah, they have buffalo out there.
They have buffalo up in Batavian.
The longer term plan is to create habitat for buffalo, which they were part of the ecosystem.
(30:47):
We actually took, when my daughters were younger, we took them down to Midewin.
I was like, well, this is really how most of Illinois looked like, and with the buffalo.
Buffalo aren't, they're not border collies, they're not that friendly, but it's good to
see them.
Talk to some Native Americans, and they have a special way of looking at it, but it requires
(31:11):
a different narrative, a new story.
It's like, well, how do we live better with the land?
Well, we shouldn't regard bugs as enemies.
We shouldn't regard grass as the perfect thing for our yards.
It's okay if you want it, and say your kids are still playing soccer, but after that,
it's like, well, there are other things you can do.
(31:33):
Yeah.
Actually, we utilize on wild iris here, that green patch in the middle that helps with
stormwater management, but that's our front yard.
That's where the Frisbee for Watson who just left the room.
Our neighbors, we all picnic in there in the summer when we have get togethers.
Individual events happen in our backyards, but community happens in those shared spaces,
(31:57):
and Calamas is like another great example.
We love to go, we have little ones, so they play on the playground and the dog.
So on the leash, but Luce catches his ball and stays nearby.
Yeah, that shared community on your front porch, I suppose, conversations are the pleasant
(32:18):
part, I think, the most pleasant part about Prairie Crossing.
I just read a little bit about in the next Meadow Mix about George's beach and the idea
that we could have had a pool and that George and Vicki said no, have had a beach instead,
and that we might not have had that kind of communal space in that way, a pool is communal
(32:41):
space, but in that way, with the connection to nature, that if they hadn't made that decision,
which is part of the reason that name was given to the beach.
The whole principle behind the design of Prairie Crossing is to get people out talking to their
neighbors.
When I look at typical suburbia, I'm always studying this because I'm sort of an inveterate
(33:05):
student of urban planning, is that a lot of houses are designed without porches, and there's
no real way to interact.
They're like three-car garages with attached homes.
Yeah, we purposely did not buy houses where the garage is the main feature.
It really is the main architectural feature of a lot of homes.
And how do you facilitate interaction, it's like, well, porches are a great thing, and
(33:29):
then trails, another thing, and then just having them clustered together in pods the
way they did here.
And there was a lot of planning involved in that, and it was all designed to get people
to look at their neighbors and actually talk to them and interact with them.
So that's still happening here.
(33:50):
We've had waves of people come and go, and that happens everywhere, but it's important
to say, well, why don't we just have a bonfire?
And we do that in our prairie orchid fire pit, which was designed for that purpose,
second Thursday of the month, and unless the weather's really bad or some people are out
(34:10):
of town, we make an effort and everything's on the table.
It's like BYOB, and it's like, what's going on?
And then there are little things like there is a bottle opener nailed to one of the posts
that hold up the blackberries.
That little nice touch that there are many down by the beach also, just nice little tactile
(34:37):
things that just facilitate life here.
I think about those all the time.
Someone thought of that, I don't know how long ago, but they put that there, the little
library that the Bar Horse Children put up as part of their project.
We go to that all the time down by the beach.
And some of the events are just enshrined in living here, like Fight Fest.
(35:00):
I'm glad that's still going and more people are getting involved and some new faces.
I love unloading and loading kids onto the hay wagon.
It's so much fun to hear them.
You're like, oh, what's going to happen?
Keep your arms in, the zombies are hungry.
They kind of look at me like, what?
But there's other things, like the Father's Day pig roast has been going on for a while.
(35:23):
The event leading up to that is Gary Zipfel, our neighbor, has sponsored the sauce making
with the guys and they're playing croquet.
So it's just a really big fun thing.
I was in a band here for a while that was called Prairie Fog and we would play every
St. Patrick's Day for a potluck.
I think I went to the last one of those.
(35:45):
And that was so much fun because it brought people in and we're playing jigs and reels
and Johnny Cash and a whole bunch of stuff.
But you know, it's the main point is like, well, how do you get people together?
You have to do stuff and you have to be deliberate about it and you have to get them in one room
or one space or just kind of start talking to them.
I also find that, which is one of the reasons I don't appreciate the listserv, is that you
(36:11):
are not looking people in the eye when you're having the disagreements that happen on there.
And I kind of feel like when we have an event like that, those anxieties or disagreements
or vitriol melts away when you see that that person owns a house just like you do and they
(36:32):
are there for the pickers just like you are.
And that really we don't disagree on all that much if we are disagreeing on a certain issue.
And I think and part of this was due to COVID, part of it was just our more, you know, wired
in age is that we become disconnected from the human reality is like, you really have
(36:52):
to like talk to somebody, find out what's going on with them.
You know, some people are going through some some pretty bad times or just things are not
going well and you can find out.
But you have to engage on a much deeper level and that goes beyond social media or listservs
and just understand is like that's not real total communication.
(37:14):
Yeah, now, four episodes in I'm meeting people that I've never hung out with before I started
easy, you know, with Wally and Ellen and and I wanted Sonny and Stuart on we'll try to
get them still but more people have been in my house because of the podcast.
And we've we've had the neighborhood here but that's about it.
(37:36):
And yeah, just to get to know people like like we're talking right now, I knew you as
the county board member.
I didn't know the connection with the Forest Preserve but I knew that you cared deeply about
it.
And I read your newsletter as part of the that work but I didn't know anything about
that and Kathleen knocking on my door asking me to sign the ballot.
(37:57):
Yeah, and Kathleen was president of the high school board for a couple of years and she
served the community well and really helped transform Grayslake Central into the great
school that it is now and actually helped establish the program where high school kids
are learning at the farm now.
So she was a big influence there and it's it's all good because you know when you're
(38:21):
in high school how often you get to go to a real farm and grow things and get credit
for it.
So I'm also working on a internship program with CLC we get kids in the Forest Preserve
and get credit and get paid and get some experiences like there's a lot of work to do.
And my only plug for the Forest Preserve anybody wants to volunteer to do restoration work
we always have openings.
(38:43):
It's a good crowd.
And what are you working on now?
You said you were close to having a book serialized.
I'm working on my book The Natural Neighborhood and sort of looking for an agent and a publisher
and I might just publish it myself.
I haven't really decided but I do like one chapter a month and then the rest of the newsletters
(39:08):
you know things kind of leading up to that.
I'm having so much fun with it because I don't have to report to an editor I don't have to
stay in my lane about a certain subject.
I mean for years I wrote books on personal finance and retirement and they did okay but
it's it's not the same thing as something you are really deeply engaged in believing.
So I'm just it's it's just a thrill and the theme of it is refinement.
(39:33):
So people ask me are you retired are you going to retire?
I was like well no I'm in the process of refinement and trying to get better at what I really
care about you know which is a variety of things but mostly writing, communication,
speaking and then you know music and drawing to some extent and doing work out in the community.
(39:54):
I guess when people ask about retirement it's about freedom to kind of do what you want
and it kind of sounds like you're actually doing what you want so why would you consider
yourself retired?
Yeah I mean it's it's not a question of doing less it's a question of doing more that really
counts.
I mean you have to do this very simple evaluation is like well what makes you feel most alive?
(40:19):
And to me it's it's it's it's a handful of things I know exactly what they are and you
know I like to be out in the middle of summer yanking sweet white clover with Jim O'Connor
and my neighbors and talking and just doing stuff like that and working in my yard and
riding my bike and exploring a new trail and just it's it's all part of the adventure.
(40:41):
I mean the narrative is is to see what it is that you have not noticed and maybe passed
by a million times.
So it's like finding that hidden detail in in the ordinary.
I was riding down a trail past Carmel High School and I noticed this little sign that
said Libertyville Nature Preserve.
(41:03):
I was like there's a nature preserve here?
I've been by this million times.
I was like what is this?
There's a little sign on the spur and the highway department put up a sign.
I was like turn left okay turn left go off the trail.
Sure enough there's a little nature preserve in between you know suburban homes and two
busy highways and it's like jeez I never knew this was here and I used to live in Libertyville.
(41:26):
I was like how can that be?
I was like well it's a discovery of something was like in nature and in your built environment.
It's like it's a wonderful serendipitous thing.
All right well let's leave it there.
John Wasik thank you so much for being on the Iran Like Podcast.
I'm humbled to have you here.
(41:47):
Thank you Dan and if anybody wants to get a hold of me the best way is through email
johnwasik at gmail.com.
You want to see my newsletter I'll put you on the list.
It doesn't cost you anything and you can get off anytime and of course you need to communicate
to me about Forest Preserve or County Matters.
You can use that email too and I'm happy to talk to anybody.
(42:08):
I get back to everybody as best I can so.
Fantastic all right well thank you again.
Thank you Dan.
Well that's our episode for this week.
I want to thank everyone for listening and again to John for his time.
(42:32):
I actually have now and we talked about the drought of interviews.
I think we are set through the end of the year.
At least I have some some context so the podcast rolls on and I meant it about my walk around
the lake.
If anybody wants to meet me at the next full moon I don't know what it is but we you know
(42:55):
we can talk about it.
You can email me reply back to my email or around the lake pc at gmail.com.
I had to get a generic email address for the podcast site so join me and we if not we will
talk to you at the next podcast.
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